PR-Bridge

Dear Public Relations (Hiring) Professional,

Students are getting mixed messages about the state of entry-level employment in communications. While some recent articles lament the “talent drain” in communications, pointing to a need for great talent, others examine how to woo today’s college graduates, with at least an air of “you don’t understand them and they don’t understand you,” which does neither employer or potential employee any good.

I say, let’s cut to the chase. If we work together, the resulting system to pipe top students into meaning positions will make for happier employees, thus solving the first half of the retention issue. And, working with Public Relations teachers (those of us surrounded by students daily), you will get the “inside baseball” look at candidates that far surpasses what you can find surfing around MySpace or Facebook.

One does not have to look far or wide to see examples of how this works in practice. For instance, all professional sports leagues have talent scouts that work closely with coaches to identify talent. The role of coach is one that can really benefit agencies and companies. We know the work of our students intimately and can talk about their strengths and challenges at length (just as sports coaches discuss 40-yard dash times, arm strength, etc.).

The easy counter to this idea is to say that PR teachers already serve as talent managers, conducted through our personal networks. My thought is that filling the talent system would work better if formalized to some degree. [A concurrent benefit is that as a level of trust builds between professional and teacher, a dialogue opens regarding other ways to utilize the talents of each.]

A formalized system, to some degree, would also attract better students into PR programs and get them thinking about the benefits and possibilities for a career in communications earlier. For example, if students knew that the University of South Florida School of Mass Communications and Fleishman, Edelman, or other agencies had direct ties, the students entering the program work harder for the potential payoff.

So, public relations hiring professional, let’s work together. Please hire my top students!

Thanks,

Bob

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 12:01 and is filed under Main Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.